I think one thing that many people overlook when they say, "Just have fans build it!" is that everything that goes into the game has to be built in specific ways. Ships more than most, as they are basically a character. They need to not only fit into a triangle count, and a material count, but they have to be split up into multiple parts, with pivots in specific locations for customization. They have to have all of their UVs set up in a way to work well with multiple different materials. They have to be set up with nodes for every phaser strip, blinky light, photon torpedo launcher, and tractor beam. They have to be named in specific ways, and a million other things I'm sure I don't know about since I'm not a ship artist.

The point being, making a ship for OUR game, is a much more involved process than just making a good looking model in Maya for renders.

All of that stuff makes it difficult to outsource. There are many iterations, many things need to be double, triple, octuple checked, and when something breaks, there needs to be someone to debug/fix it who knows what they're doing.